Clive Hamilton, well known for his books on global warming, has tackled a different topic in Silent Invasion: China’s influence in Australia (Hardie Grant Publishing, 2018). He claims that China’s Communist Party has gained so much influence in Australia that it’s ‘taking over’.

The book is worth reading for one reason at least: the light that it sheds on the beliefs, goals and methods of John Hu’s ‘Australian Values Alliance’ (AVA), a group of outspoken anti-communists who work among people of Chinese heritage.

Hamilton makes no secret of his association with John Hu. Indeed, he gives Hu special praise on the acknowledgements page. It’s apparent from the text of the book that the author has not only used the Australian Values Alliance as a source – he has also come to identify very strongly with their views.

But do groups like the AVA represent current mainstream opinion within Australia’s Chinese community? Hamilton recognises that they don’t:

The creeping and almost complete takeover of Chinese organisations in Australia by people loyal to Beijing has caused alarm… Those who migrated to escape persecution or simply to live freely are feeling outnumbered.

I don’t doubt Hamilton’s sources told him they’re ‘feeling outnumbered’. It presumably means they are in a minority within their own ethnic community.

But what of the people who they feel outnumbered by? Are the people doing the outnumbering generally ‘loyal to Beijing’ in a completely uncritical way? Is there a middle ground – people who value multi-party democracy, but are less vehemently anti-Beijing than Hamilton’s outnumbered friends?

The phrase ‘almost complete takeover’ is also worth noting. A dramatic claim, but can it be sustained?

According to Hamilton, the changing character of Chinese organisations in Australia has been brought about via the conspiratorial manoeuvres of the Communist Party of China, operating through China’s embassy, consulates, and various front groups.

His book does however point to another factor, namely a shift in attitudes among recent arrivers from China, including students. He laments that recent arrivers don’t share the anti-Beijing views of earlier waves of migrants, because they think the Communist Party rescued China from its ‘century of humiliation’.

As Hamilton and his sources see it, this younger cohort of Chinese in Australia have been ‘brainwashed’ – just one of the extremely negative and emotive terms repeatedly used in this book.

By means of Hamilton’s book, the ‘outnumbered ones’ within Australia’s Chinese community are now appealing for support from non-Chinese Australians and from the Federal government, especially its security arm. And senior politicians are listening and agreeing.

Last month, Liberal members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security demonstrated their support for Hamilton and his associates by proposing to incorporate The Silent Invasion into the parliamentary record. This would have given the book some of the benefits of parliamentary privilege, such as protection from defamation proceedings. According to the ABC, it would have been the first time any book received that special legal status. ALP members of the joint committee had the sense to oppose the proposal.

A book with such high-level Liberal Party patronage cannot be ignored, even if some of its claims and demands seem strange. And some of its claims and demands seem very strange indeed. Hamilton writes:

Are we so soft as to defend everyone’s right to free speech when their objective is to take away our free speech?

In other words, we need to stop admirers of Xi Jinping from taking away our free-speech rights by taking away theirs? Is Hamilton really saying this?

The book expresses much alarm about instances where pro-Beijing people in Australia have allegedly tried to silence others. Hamilton mentions a scuffle between pro-Beijing and anti-Beijing demonstrators he saw in Canberra in 2008, and a Chinese student at the ANU making a scene in a campus pharmacy about a stack of Falun Gong newspapers in 2015.

He also writes of an anti-Beijing author who attended a meeting of the Chinese Writers Association in Melbourne in 2014. She was given ten minutes speaking time when she expected more, and she didn’t get a chance to take questions. Hamilton says this happened because the Melbourne Chinese Writers Association had been taken over.

On the other hand, Hamilton sympathises with anti-Beijing people even when they make blatant, organised attempts to silence those they see as pro-Beijing. Under the heading ‘Chinese-Australians resist’, he writes about the 2016 campaign to stop Sydney and Melbourne people from holding concerts in honour of Chairman Mao on the anniversary of his death. The campaigners got the result they wanted. The concerts were cancelled because, as Hamilton writes, ‘planned protests foreshadowed trouble.’

Hamilton doesn’t mention the role played by the AVA in the protest planning that foreshadowed trouble. But the AVA website (accessed March 2, 2018) boasts about the job it did. The website uses the term ‘red poison’ to describe the concerts that its actions stopped from happening.

The AVA and its associates waged a similar campaign in early 2017 against the stage drama The Red Detachment of Women. Red Detachment is a 1960s ballet about the peasant women on the island of Hainan who fought as guerrillas in the Chinese Civil War. President Richard Nixon watched a performance of the ballet when he visited China in 1972.

Here again, Hamilton’s sympathies are with the would-be censors. He complains that the ballet ‘glorifies the Red Army.’ Looking at its title, who would have suspected?

The campaign against Red Detachment was unsuccessful – the performances went ahead. Was that outcome a setback for Australian values, or a victory? Perhaps it depends on which Australian values you have in mind.

Clive Hamilton’s promotion of political censorship might seem less strange if Australia were experiencing an actual armed invasion, or an imminent threat of one. And Hamilton has clearly become convinced that we’re experiencing the equivalent of an invasion right now. But are we?

Can it be true that Australia’s Chinese community (about five percent of Australia’s population) has experienced an ‘almost complete takeover’ of its civic organisations?

Hamilton’s narrative about Chinese community politics fails to look at one of the community’s historically most political groups – the Australasian section of the Kuomintang, or the KMT, also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party of Australasia. The phrase ‘elephant in the room’ comes to mind here.

The Sydney headquarters of the KMT can be seen today by anyone who takes a walk along Ultimo Road, Haymarket. It is a four-storey building that flies the blue-and-white flag of the Kuomintang from its rooftop, flanked by the flags of Australia and Taiwan, and it displays the KMT name in very large traditional Chinese characters on its frontage.

The Kuomintang was founded by Sun Yat-sen, and afterwards led by Chiang Kai-shek. Under Chiang, it fought against the Communist Party of China in the Civil War, which became a frozen conflict after Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan. If China’s Communist Party had taken over Sydney’s Chinatown, would the KMT flag still fly there?

Information about how the Australasian KMT has operated over the years can be found in the book Unlocking the history of the Australasian Kuo Min Tang – 1911 to 2013, by Mei-fen Kuo and Judith Brett.

Mei-fen Kuo’s historical research was supported by the Australasian KMT itself. It’s instructive to compare what she says about the way the KMT operated in Australia in the past, especially during the Cold War, with what Clive Hamilton says about CPC activity in Australia now.

She mentions, for instance, that the KMT maintained close links with Chiang Kai-shek’s embassy and consulates until Australia withdrew recognition from the Taiwan regime in 1972. It should be remembered that Taiwan was a one-party state then, as the People’s Republic of China still is today.

She also mentions that the KMT propagated its message via what might be called ‘front groups’, such as the Australia Free China Associations and the Overseas Chinese Anti-communist Association. It quietly lobbied senior Australian politicians about, for instance, immigration and foreign policy.

Did it ‘influence’ Australia? Probably yes. But that is not the same thing as an ‘invasion’.

Mei-fen Kuo’s book situates the history of the Australasian KMT in the context of political history in China, Taiwan and Australia. She expresses her own position clearly, though never stridently. As an admirer of Sun Yat-sen, she thinks that the multiparty system that Taiwan eventually developed is a realisation of Sun’s ideals, and she hopes that China will someday take a similar path.

That is hardly a ‘pro-Beijing’ statement. Yet its tone is very different from that of Hamilton and his friends in the AVA.

Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places.

If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate.

Colin Robinson grew up in Western Australia during the Vietnam War period, and now lives in Sydney. He has a lifelong interest in relations between different countries and cultures, as well as in protest movements and social change. He studied Social and Political Theory and Chinese Studies at Murdoch University, WA.

Comments

The issues Hamilton raises are serious ones. They relate to housing affordability, for example, which is a big issue in our capital cities. And only this week we heard that Chinese students represent some forty per cent of foreign students at Sydney University. Can we expect that all these students understand academic freedom and independent thinking that is the cornerstone of university tradition here? Meantime we read that there are cameras recording the movement of pedestrians in China, recording minor unpaid debts and ‘punishing’ those who do not obey rules. China is a highly -regulated society; ours has traditions of liberty, freedom and tolerance of many views. Australian standards must seem very strange to many Chinese, who cannot abide ‘wrong’ views e.g. on the Dalai Lama or Taiwan or the so-called “South China Sea’ that China is militarising as we speak. Finally, there is the issue of ports like Darwin and Newcastle falling under Chinese control. In sum, there are a number of large issues Hamilton raises which need public attention.
Only last year we saw how Sam Dastaryi came to grief when told how he should react to the takeover of islands in the South China Sea. Yet that was apparently the tip of the iceberg. Many other politicians have accepted Chinese money and sing China’s praises.

The comments from China about ;mutual respect’ seem odd when we read recent attacks from China on Aussie swimmers who – they complain -come from countries which took the refuse from British prisons.
Any thinking person would do well to read the book for themselves and not listen to the barrage of complaints about it. It sounds like an orchestrated campaign to shut the book down. It isn’t working- the book is going into a second printing. Read it for yourself and make your own judgements. There might be some exaggeration. from Hamilton. But probably there’s truth on both sides.

I ws disappointed that Tim was yet another to be super ready to warn us all against racism, though he does it in a clever and subtle way.
There are many suggestions that the Chinese themselves can be racist, e.g. accusing Australians of being descended from convicts- even though I thought this was something to be proud of, myself! As everyone knows, nobody but the Chinese can buy Chinese land, but if we raise our voices about Chinese buying up our farmland, water rights and ports the cries of ‘racist’ appear at once. It is of course fashionable to accuse Australians of racism, though when you look at individual cases it can more complex than first thought (e.g. our article on the so-called “Cronulla Riots”)
Academics and security people have raised many of these university issues- especially as Chinese appear to be such a large proportion of foreign students- in regard to protecting academic freedom in our universities. Without it our universities become more organs for the transmission of accepted dogma, which seems to be the case in China and many other countries. The Four Corners program raised many serious issues re student groups, organised demonstrations against Tibet and so on, which Hamilton largely supports.
Finally:
I don’t think any of the critics I’ve read have had a hard look at Chinese Government penetration of the Labor Right in NSW or of any other political party. The parade of Labor figures singing sweet songs about the wonderful Chinese and their achievement bewilders me. Are none of them concerned about the military buildup in the Spratly Islands, buying the port of Darwin, penetration of the government of Sri Lanka, etc?
So again: I’m waiting to see if the academic establishment, or any government sources, is willing to acknowledge the serious issues. All very well for the Chinese Government’s media to flush the book down the toilet. Confront the issues, and assess how accurate the accusations are, please!

Colin Robinson’s “review” is absurd. It dismisses a 100,000 word book packed with information, with 1,200 endnotes containing hundreds of sources, a piece of research that included interviews with dozens of people (many named in the acknowledgements) as effectively the opinion of John Hu, one of those I spoke to from the Chinese-Australian community.
His article is so ridiculous in its claims that all I can do is urge readers to pick up my book to see that Robinson cannot be taken seriously.

I have just started to read the book, but have long found much of the discourse around China suspect. It is as though Australian commentators think it bizarre that China engages in soft power and strategic diplomacy – something that every other nation also does.

I haven’t finished reading Clive Hamilton’s book yet but I am finding this review and some of the comments faulty in that they are coming from a position they have already formed due to their political views. As to this comment, name the country that has used military power to threaten Australia since the Second World War (don’t say the USA since they have not threatened us) and tell me what countries have used “soft power” against us IN THE SAME WAY AND TO THE SAME EXTENT that Hamilton suggests China is doing to us.

Soft or hard? Penetration of our sovereignty is still the point. If Clive Hamilton’s book just gets the issue of the Chinese Government’s penetration of our economy (and persuasion of our politicians to its point of view) onto the public agenda – we have made some important progress.
The argument among various public figures is interesting, but I’d like to see a thorough public consideration of how far the Chinese Government is directing students to do its bidding. Let alone what its long-term strategy is, in buying up ports, securing large farms with critical water rights, and “persuading” politicians to do what it wants. And indeed, militarising the Spratly Islands. The new US Ambassador to Australia says it’s all a very carefully calculated strategy.
I tried to raise these issues in a couple of articles on onlineopinion.com.au – and here:

Those who are sceptical about Clive’s claims should read what Wang Yi, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs has written in the English language China Watch supplement included in the Sydney Morning Herald 23 March 2018. He wants to develop a new global governance system in accordance with Xi Jinpimg’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics.
I was in Canberra when the huge influx of Chinese students attacked pro democracy demonstrators. I was not one of them, but joined their ranks when I saw them under attack. I was beaten over the head with Chinese flags and ordered by these foreign students to go home. I was also approached by men from the Chinese Embassy who criticised me for taking part in the demonstration.
This political activity by these foreign students, who were acting as agents of a foreign power on the very lawns of our federal parliament was a breach of diplomatic convention and quite likely illegal. Yet neither the ACT government nor the AFP seemed interested.
Several years before, when I was helping some Falun Gong people to organise a protest against the treatment of their members in China, I wa s contacted by the Chinese Embassy and warned off.
If our governments continue to accept such unprecedented behaviour by a foreign power, and even allow th control of crucial infrastructure we are virtually rolling over and offering to become a client state of the Chinese Communist Party.
Ign
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As Hamilton writes, imagine the result if the protest in Canberra were to be mirrored by Australian students in Beijing, perhaps in Tienanmen Square?

I side with Hamilton in his criticism of Robinson’s review. For instance, he isolates the word ‘brainwashing’ without explaining Hamilton’s explanation of the way in which the Chinese changed their reaction to the west after Tienanmen.

By the same token, while the book (which I am halfway through) is most certainly not racist, I worry, with Tim Soutphommasane that it may result in some Australians – those who do not or do not wish to wrestle with the subtleties – to tar all Chinese Australians with the same brush.

I am not racist. This was a crucial research and book that all Australians should read to see what is really happening and find a way to move forward and repair our unhappy nation and avoid manipulation from ALL vested interests. The Australian people, their shared and culture history (unhealed) and shared land, at present need protection. Multicultural does not mean selling off a nation to a large militarised cashed up nation. It means taking in people from all nations, especially those who need sanctuary. We have not done well with that due to ignorance at the top, and the changing global paradigms due to senseless wars, climate change, the current demise of America and the rise of China. All hypocrisies are being revealed, along with the enormous the suffering they cause. No clever (or even better, stable and intelligent) nation sells its iconic buildings and land, much less this cheaply, rendering its own most vulnerable people without access to housing and equity – much less sell its water rights, largest landholdings, utilities and railways. We are fully aware of the skill with which the Chinese government and its supporters, students or otherwise, are muddying the waters. We are aware that there are fake Falun Gung amongst the true victims, seeking asylum. We know how China is angry with our rightful support of Tibet and East Turkestan. Shouting ‘racism’ is on obvious one. All nations still have some people exhibiting form of racism, which is really fear: is is part of what humanity is tragically learning, yet this is China’s loudest tool to gain leverage here for gain. Not many nations have so little regard for the rights of others, or harvest organs from political prisoners and invade their neighbours (especially the most vulnerable and corrupt) monetarily – or literally. Not many have an ambitious population that is 1/5 of the world and is largely brainwashed from birth about its cultural superiority and its ‘time’ now. Australia would be foolish to allow the usual CCP rhetoric to constantly invade our spaces and communications media (which it is doing, well-funded, strongly and forcefully), bully our Chinese people here, and confuse people away from the serious issues at hand. Which Clive Hamilton outlines systematically and clearly. The fact that our last election was muddied, thanks to Murdoch makes this issue even more important, as a nation in disunity and moral disarray (and people easily bought at the top) is grist for China’s mill.

I can only agree with all that has been said. I have observed for the last 40;years, the manner in which
China has quietly moved from intimidating its people at home, to endeavouring to control, with some success, Chinese people who have migrated to other countries, like Australia. I have been involved with the Tibetan people for many years, and to my sorrow, have seen the absolute cruelty inflicted upon them from the uncaring Chinese Government. The only thing that China wants, is complete control…You could see it in the eyes of their president when he gained his wish …..President for life….Scary stuff…and that is just the beginning….be warned, we too could end up like the Tibetan people, and I am sure the world is also in the planning stages…..

Silent Invasion is packed with sensationalist stories on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has influenced the governments, businesses, universities, and especially Chinese communities in Australia for the last decade or more. Truth be told, much of the ‘revelations’ are already on public record, and it is a legitimate concern that attempts by the CCP to encourage the Chinese communities in Australia to pledge loyalty to China can damage the social cohesion of Australia.

I have two major, and interrelated, criticisms of the book. Firstly, it portrays the CCP as ‘brainwashing’ the Chinese populace into accepting a geopolitical worldview based on CCP historic revisionism. In fact, similar views have been held by Chinese for centuries, and (as Clive Hamilton concedes on the last page of the book) are still held by Chinese across the political spectrum. Secondly, it accepts all statements which go against the Chinese geopolitical worldview as facts, without providing any evidence to support such claims.

While much of the book is at pains to stress that it is not anti-Chinese, it does contain a single racist paragraph, which accuses ethnic Chinese at the Australian Defence Force Academy to be potential CCP spies simply because of their ethnicity. This however is in tune with the message of the book: the loyalty of all ethnic Chinese in Australia are suspect, unless they prove their loyalty towards Australia, preferably by joining a far-right political party. No wonder Australians of Chinese heritage rarely run for political offices nowadays.

While there are a number of points of concern mentioned it doesn’t take into consideration America going from a position of hyper-power declining to superpower status. A shift to regional hegemonies, and an international changing of the guard.

The changing of the guard will occur between 2050 and 2070 in my estimation.

Australia has torn allegiances, of economics and military. Australia’s economic allegiance is now with China, while it’s military allegiance is with America.

The real question is will Australia side with economic stability and trade in military relationships and privacy, or keep military relationships and risk our economy to protect values. This is a boiled down position when the changing of the guard will occur.

Stunning.
Colin Robinson is an example of how the internet can allow even the most benighted,naive and semi educated folk to parade as an intellectual.
Australians in general seem to have a blind spot when it comes to understanding what corruption is and how it works.
To claim there is nothing to fear from political donations and that there is no threat to sovereignty from CCP connected donors is simply breathtaking in its ignorance.
Part of me feels sorry for Colin.
I’ll keep it simple but corruption works by patronage and cronyism.
Soft favours. Reciprocity. Access.
Ministers run departments and regulators.
Regulators make decisions and make rules.
Mostly these people are answerable to a Politician.
Rules about how big infrastructure works or who runs them are worth billions of dollars.
Decisions about vital infrastructure like gas pipelines, electricity networks, ports, air ports, railways etc are huge decisions that affect us all.
Gaining control over these assets or affecting the rules about them could have huge consequences. Financial and security and soverignty.
If you can use political influence to influence the regulation or control of these assets – you can control the economy and the country.

If Mr Robinson doesn’t understand this simple concept them I am afraid I can’t help him.
He may be beyond help.
To think Australia is somehow beyond the reach of this type of influence is delusional and plain arrogant.
To think the CCP and their agents are all just good honest business. An looking for mutually benefial trade outcomes is stupendously ignorant.
I assume Mr Robinson is the classic 1970s hippy who now claims he was against the Vietnam war and hates the USA. I assume he has adopted the facile maxim that his enemies enemies are his friend.
Naive in the extreme. Ideologues are often blind to reality and complexity.

Shutting out Huawei is one solid benchmark on the limits of China’s influence. And keeping them out I might add. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep doing these big things that enrage China and you will smoke out the rats in the system. Better to bring things to a head with mainland China than sit by watching slowly creeping vines.